IRLF 


GT*  HE  fate  of 
J[  the  world 
may  have  hung 
by  a  thread  at 
times  during  the 
crowded  years  of 
the  war,  but  it 
hung  by  a  wire 
rope  pretty  nearly 
all  of  the  time" 


One  of  the  70,000  mines  that  blocked  the  northern  entrance 
to  the  North  Sea 


- 


•Wire-Roping 
the  German  Submarine 


The  Barrage 

That  Stopped  the 

U-Boat 


PUBLISHED  BY 

JOHN  A.  ROEBLING'S  SONS  Co. 

Trenton,  N.  J. 


COPYRIGHT  1920  BY  JOHN  A.  ROEBLING'S  SONS  CO, 


FOREWORD 

What  every  American  industry  did  in  the  war  is  oj 
interest  to  the  American  people. 

What  a  particular  industry  did  is  of  even  keener 
interest  to  those  engaged  in  it,  and  to  those  with  whom 
they  have  relations. 

Furthermore^  every  industry  owes  it  to  itself  to 
record  for  the  benefit  of  posterity  the  part  it  played  in 
the  greatest  struggle  that  ever  tested  the  moral  fibre 
of  mankind. 

For  these  reasons  this  booklet  has  been  prepared 
by  one  of  those  American  institutions  which  had  a 
part  in  supplying  the  wire  rope  needs  of  the  Allies. 


JOHN  A.  ROEBLING'S  SONS  Co. 
TRENTON,  N.  J. 


March  /,  1920 


4.13.145 


The  North  Sea  Mine  Barrage 


THE    BARRAGE 

THAT    STOPPED    THE 

U-BOAT 

Extracts  from  an  Article  by  Captain  Reginald  R.  Belknap, 

U.  S.  N.,  Commander  of  the  U.  S.  Mine-laying  Squadron. 

From  the  Scientific  American,  March  15-22,  1919. 

IN  Admiral  Sims'  address,  just  before  the  American 
Mine-laying  Squadron  left  Portland,  England,  for 
home,  he  said,  " After  we  came  into  the  war  we  de- 
signed a  mine,  built  it,  equipped  the  mine  layers,  sent 
them  over  to  this  side,  and  planted  more  mines  in  less 
space  of  time  than  any  nation  in   the  world  ever 
thought  of  doing  before — one  of  the  finest  stunts  the 
Navy  has  accomplished  on  this  side. 

Reducing  a  new  invention  to  practice  in  a  few 
months  is  no  small  problem,  especially  when  it  is  a 
mine  to  be  planted  much  deeper,  and  over  bottom  100 
fathoms  deeper  than  ever  before — yet  this  had  to  be 
done  to  meet  the  enemy's  submarine  campaign,  the 
most  serious  menace  to  the  cause  of  America  and  the 
Allies. 

Briefly,  the  project  was  for  the  United  States  and 
British  mining  forces  to  co-operate  in  establishing  a 
mine-field  barrier  across  the  North  Sea  between  Scot- 
land and  Norway.  The  mine-field  would  measure  230 
miles  long  by  25  average  width,  consist  of  70,000 
mines  in  "systems,"  each  comprising  one  or  more 
lines  of  mines  near  the  surface,  other  mines  deeper, 
and  yet  more,  deeper  still,  so  as  to  bar  or  imperil  the 
passing  of  any  vessel,  whether  on  the  surface  or  sub- 
merged. 


THE  BARRAGE  THAT  STOPPED  THE  U-BOAT 

The  terms  "impossible"  and  ' 'foolish"  were  freely 
applied  to  the  scheme.  Contracts  for  100,000  mines 
would  have  to  be  let,  and  tens  of  millions  more  spent 
outright,  both  here  and  in  Great  Britain,  based  on 
test  of  the  mine  only  by  parts,  since  a  complete  new 
mine  did  not  yet  exist.  But  in  spite  of  the  several 
elements  of  uncertainty,  the  undertaking  had  the 
unqualified  approval  of  everyone  in  authority,  from 
the  President  down. 

Secrecy,  as  well  as  haste,  necessitated  dividing  the 
construction  of  the  mine  among  500  contractors  and 
sub-contractors.  Parts  manufactured  in  different 
places  were  sent  to  a  third  place  for  joining,  and  all 
were  finally  sent  to  Norfolk,  Virginia,  whence  they 
were  shipped  to  Scotland,  where  the  mines  would  be 
assembled  complete  for  the  first  time,  ready  for  plant- 
ing. The  mine  spheres  wTere  charged  with  high  ex- 
plosive at  a  plant  near  Norfolk,  containing  large 
steam  kettles,  which  poured  300  pounds  of  molten 
TNT  into  each  sphere.  In  this  quiet  corner  the 
sailors  worked  in  constant  danger  from  fire  and  the 
poisonous  fumes  of  the  molten  explosive.  Several 
were  seriously  overcome  and  one  died  from  the  effects, 
but  the  rest  stuck  to  it  through  the  long,  hot  summer. 

To  carry  the  mine  material  over,  small  steamers 
were  chosen  to  minimize  the  effect  on  the  operation  in 
case  of  loss.  One,  the  "Lake  Moor,"  was  sunk  by  a 
submarine  in  April,  with  forty-one  of  her  crew,  making 
almost  the  only  loss  of  life  in  the  whole  operation. 
They  had  capacity  of  2,000  to  3,000  tons  and 
carried  1,200  to  1,800  mines,  besides  stores  of  various 
kinds.  Our  mine-laying  squadron  and  bases  were 
supplied  almost  entirely  from  America,  obtaining 

8 


THE  BARRAGE  THAT  STOPPED  THE  U-BOAT 

abroad  little  more  than  fuel,  fresh  meat  and  vegetables. 
There  were  twenty-four  of  these  carrier  steamers 
constantly  employed,  from  February  on,  two  or  three 
sailings  every  eight  days. 

Before  the  first  system  of  the  barrier  was  half  way 
across  the  North  Sea,  reports  of  damage  to  the  enemy 
began  to  come  in.  This  was  in  early  July,  and  before 
October  ten  submarines  had  been  destroyed  in  the 
barrier  and  probably  many  more.  From  the  very 
circumstances  in  that  vicinity,  the  actual  toll  may 
never  be  known.  The  latest  report  is  that  the  Ger- 
mans admit  twenty-three  lost  there  and  other  authori- 
ties ascribe  the  fleet's  surrender  and  the  final  armistice 
largely  to  the  defeat  of  the  submarine  campaign 
which  the  Northern  Mine  Barrage  forced  the  enemy 
to  accept. 


Loading  mines  on  scows  to  be  transferred  to  ships  of  the 
mine-laying  squadron 


A  loose  mine  astern  of  a  mine  sweeper 
IO 


Wire- Roping 
the  German  Submarine 

THE  whole  amazing  episode  of  the 
North  Sea  Mine  Barrage  which,  with 
its  70,000  bottled  volcanoes,  made  that 
historic  water  a  graveyard  for  German 
hopes,  was  hidden  from  general  knowledge, 
even  down  to  the  removal,  by  the  "smoke- 
screen" of  secrecy  which  is  traditional  in  the 
Navy. 

While  the  armies  in  all  theatres  swayed 
back  and  forth  in  the  world  struggle,  the 
spot-light  of  publicity  never  left  them. 

"MUM"  WAS  THE 
NAVY'S  WATCHWORD 

The  navies,  others  as  well  as  our  own,  did 
their  work,  some  great,  some  small,  but  all 
important,  in  the  dark  so  far  as  public 
knowledge  was  concerned. 

The  naval  specialty  was  keeping  still 
about  it. 

ii 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

Not  until  the  "moving  finger"  had  written 
failure  across  the  German  plans  was  any 
whisper  allowed  to  escape  regarding  the 
great  work  that  was  done  in  making  the 
submarine  warfare  ineffective. 

What  makes  it  still  more  impressive  is 
that  the  work  of  creating  the  barrage  in- 
volved so  many  men  and  so  many  classes  of 
men.  Thousands  of  heads  and  hands  were 
at  work  helping  to  put  it  through,  but  it 
remained  a  secret  until  the  job  was  done. 

Now  that  the  last  steel-jacketed  bundle  of 
TNT  has  been  gathered  up  and  put  out  of 
commission,  making  the  sea  again  a  path- 
way for  peaceful  commerce,  there  are  many 
things  which  may  be  revealed  as  part  of  the 
record  of  the  accomplishment,  which  add  to 
its  magnitude  and  its  value. 

THE  FATE  OF  THE  WORLD 
HUNG  BY  A  WIRE  ROPE 

The  fate  of  the  world,  for  example,  may 
have  hung  by  a  thread  at  times  during  the 
crowded  years  of  the  war,  but  it  hung  by  a 
wire  rope  pretty  nearly  all  the  time. 

12 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

Wire  rope  has  come  to  be  so  much  of  a 
commonplace  in  the  everyday  work  of  the 
world  that  it  is  taken  for  granted.  To  the 
man  in  the  street  it  has  no  dramatic  value. 
People  accept  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 

There  is  a  thrill  in  the  picture,  and  even 
in  the  thought  of  men  and  ships  sowing  a 
perilous  seaway  with  high  explosive  so 
thickly  that  a  fish  would  be  ill-advised  to 
navigate  it. 

The  devising  and  the  laying  of  this  deadly 
barrier,  with  all  it  meant,  will  go  down  in 
history  as  a  deed  of  signal  ingenuity  and 
daring,  and  its  removal  as  a  desperately 
ticklish  job,  done  with  conspicuous  effi- 
ciency. But  who  can  write  a  poem  or  even 
a  rip-roaring  chantey  about  wire  rope? 

WIRE  ROPE 

IN  THE  NORTH  SEA  BARRAGE 

Wire  rope,  in  the  epic  of  the  North  Sea 
Barrage,  sounds  like  an  incidental,  but  an 
outline  of  the  part  it  played  will  be  of  in- 
terest to  many  and  will  illustrate,  as  per- 
haps nothing  else  could  do,  the  devotion  and 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

efficiency,  in  a  thousand  fields,  of  the 
thousands  of  men  behind  the  men  behind 
the  mines.  In  these  days  of  overpowering 
numerals  probably  even  the  figures  of  wire 
rope  in  the  war  will  be  read  without  leaving 
any  clear  impression  of  the  unbelievable 
work  they  register. 

EIGHTY  MILLION  FEET 
OF  WIRE  ROPE 

Men  who  through  a  good  part  of  their 
lives  have  been  accustomed  to  see  wire  rope 
on  every  street  and  in  every  mill  and  every 
hardware  store,  may  not  be  greatly  im- 
pressed by  the  statement  that  the  North 
Sea  project  required  approximately  eighty 
million  feet  of  rope.  To  say  that  the  total 
war  requirement  of  this  country  was  more 
than  two  hundred  million  feet  is  no  more 
convincing. 

But  when  one  stops  to  think,  by  way  of 
preliminary,  that  the  rope  used  for  war 
purposes  was  in  large  measure  special  sizes, 
special  quality  and  tests,  and  that  it  was 
nearly  all  excess  over  normal  production, 
and,  furthermore,  that  during  the  time  it 


GERMAN 


SUBMARINE 


Trucking  bottled  volcanoes  at  a  mine  assembling  plant 


was    being    produced    no    industry    in    the 
United  States  was  compelled  to  go  without; 
—the   magnitude   of   the   operation   which 
produced  it  begins  to  be  suggested. 

Without  wire  rope,  in  quantities  and  at  a 
rate  of  production  hitherto  undreamed  of, 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

the  German  might  today  have  been  dining 
in  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  or  the  Cheshire  Cat. 
Certainly  the  task  of  closing  the  North  Sea 
to  German  submersibles  and  to  other  enemy 
ships  as  well,  could  not  have  been  under- 
taken, much  less  accomplished. 

A  WORK  OF  UNDREAMED  OF  MAGNITUDE 
DONE  AT  TOP  SPEED 

The  same  may  be  said  with  truth  of  other 
factors  in  this  and  divers  war  operations, 
but  the  swiftness  with  which  the  barrage 
project  was  executed,  the  brief  time  allowed 
for  the  fulfillment  of  unheard  of  demands, 
the  small  number  of  plants  in  which  the 
work  had  to  be  done,  many  of  them  far  from 
the  point  of  shipment,  the  highly  specialized 
equipment  and  processes  employed  in  the 
manufacture,  all  go  to  make  the  story  of 
wire  rope,  in  connection  with  both  the 
laying  and  removal  of  the  barrage,  one  of 
deep  industrial  and  patriotic  interest. 


16 


RMAN  SUBMARIN 


II 


When,  in  the  spring  of  1918,  the  Yankee 
mine  layers  were  sowing  the  troubled  waters 
between  Norway  and  the  Orkneys  with 
three-hundred  pound  cases  of  death  and 
destruction  at  the  rate,  when  at  actual 
work,  of  one  every  twelve  seconds,  it  is 
doubtful  if  even  they  stopped  to  think  what 
it  meant  in  brains  and  money  and  time  and 
energy  and  native  honesty  and  patriotism 
to  produce  on  time,  and  in  rrecord  time,  the 
twelve  hundred  feet  of  rope  that  went  out  of 
sight  with  every  mine. 

> 

BURYING  6,000,000  FEET  OF  ROPE 
IN  EACH  MINING  EXCURSION 

Each  mining  excursion  carried  and  buried 
six  million  feet  of  rope.  Like  the  men  who 
ran  the  ships  and  those  who  dropped  the 
mines,  every  foot  of  it  did  its  American  duty, 

17 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 


Some  of  the  wire  rope  used  to  sweep  up  the  mines 
in  the  North  Sea 


18 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

and  the  record  of  the  undertaking  showed 
that  exacting  science  and  unsparing  severity 
in  rejection  had  made  the  product  practically 
perfect  in  spite  of  all  difficulties. 

It  is  unpleasant  to  think  what  would  have 
happened  if  the  fine-drawn  plummet  cords 
had  been  defective,  or  to  consider  the  halt 
that  would  have  been  called  to  the  whole 
operation  if  in  the  later  "excursions"  the 
mooring  cables  had  not  been  ready  on  the 
dot  and  equal  to  the  work  they  had  to  do. 
There  were  no  loose  American  mines  afloat 
in  the  North  Sea,  no  mines  that  did  not 
function,  and  when  the  end  came  and  the 
barrier  had  to  be  removed,  all  were  swept 
up  intact.  The  Navy  proved  a  hundred 
per  cent  in  time  and  quality,  and  so  did  the 
rope.  Both  were  a  credit  to  the  country 
that  produced  them. 

IT  WAS  ALL  UP  TO 
AMERICAN  MANUFACTURERS 

When  the  barrage  project,  which  the 
British  and  many  who  were  not  British 
counted  impossible,  was  finally  decided  on, 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

the  question  of  stupendous  manufacture 
confronted  the  Government.  England  and 
the  Continent,  both  overburdened,  could 
not  help.  It  was  all  up  to  the  American 
manufacturers. 

Mechanically  complex  as  the  American 
mine  had  come  to  be,  with  its  varied  im- 
provements to  increase  sensitivity  and 
destructiveness,  the  problem  of  construction 
was  in  some  parts  easily  solved.  By  curtail- 
ing the  automobile  industry  the  mine  cases 
and  anchor  boxes  were  supplied  promptly 
and  in  quantity;  contraction  of  building  and 
electrical  construction  supplied  the  elec- 
trical devices  and  trip  hooks  vital  to  high 
effectiveness. 

But  the  wire  rope  makers  had  to  shoulder 
the  whole  burden  of  their  huge  task  without 
curtailing  the  multitude  of  war  industries 
whose  needs  were  equally  imperative.  For 
in  the  meantime  all  the  multifarious  activities 
in  which  wire  rope  is  employed  were  forging 
ahead  in  a  fever  of  war  production. 


20 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

ROPE  AND  STILL  MORE 
ROPE  DEMANDED 

The  demand  for  coal  and  metals  never 
ceased;  the  mines  of  coal  and  copper  needed 
more  rope  instead  of  less. 

The  oil  industries  had  to  have  rope  for 
drilling  and  pumping  and  bailing. 

Manufacturing  plants  were  running  over- 
time, calling  daily  for  more  rope  for  power 
transmission,  cranes,  hoists  and  slings. 

The  lumber  camps  were  demanding  larger 
supply  in  their  effort  to  get  unprecedented 
quantities  of  logs  to  the  rail  lines,  and  the 
shipyards — old  ones  being  extended  and 
enormous  new  ones  being  built — could  not 
live  without  rope  in  staggering  quantities. 

Hog  Island  alone  had  to  have  five  million 
feet  before  it  could  turn  out  a  ship. 

Railroads,  elevators,  contractors,  steel 
mills,  army,  navy— all  the  productive  and 
constructive  industries  of  the  country 
clamored  in  every  mail  for  more  wire  rope. 


21 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

AND  THEN— 
THE  DELUGE 

No  one  has  yet  begun  to  forget  the  con- 
ditions that  prevailed  in  every  form  of 
manufacture  at  that  time.  The  thirteen 
makers  of  wire  rope  will  never  forget  it. 
Sole  producers  of  a  commodity  without 
which  a  mechanical  war  could  not  go  on 
any  more  than  it  could  without  guns  and 
powder  and  ships  and  men,  they  received, 
in  January,  1918,  an  order  to  produce  for 
the  Mine  Barrage,  at  almost  superhuman 
speed,  78,000,000  feet  of  special  rope,  in 
addition  to  the  load  they  were  carrying. 
It  was  like  ordering  the  Atlantic  Fleet  to  go 
in  and  take  Heligoland. 

But  by  May  first  they  had  made  and 
shipped,  without  flaw  and  without  a  single 
delay,  rope  of  various  sizes  and  specifications 
designed  solely  for  this  work  and  subject  to 
the  most  exhaustive  tests,  to  equip  and 
anchor  a  hundred  thousand  mines. 

This  was  not  turning  out  standard  trade 
stuff  for  which  they  were  equipped.  It  was 
all  "different."  There  was  one  rope  for  the 

22 


GERMAN 


SUBMARINE 


The  mine-laying  squadron  in  action 


hoisting  gear,  another  for  the  plummet  cord, 
another  for  slings,  another  for  ignition  cord, 
another  for  anchors  and  so  on. 

With  all  these  the  maximum  of  strength 
and  the  minimum  of  weight  was  essential, 
and  the  equipment  of  the  factories  was  not, 
in  the  main,  adapted  to  the  type  of  product 

23 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

contemplated.  Production  was  sharply  re- 
duced when  a  plant  which  had  been  making 
inch  and  a  half  cable  was  set  to  work  on  a 
fine  rope  measuring  but  seven-sixteenths  of 
an  inch.  This  situation  called  for  material 
transfer  of  equipment. 

In  addition,  the  Roebling  Company, 
Trenton,  N.  J.,  one  of  the  largest  producers, 
had  suffered,  by  presumably  incendiary 
fires  in  1914  and  1915,  the  loss  of  two  of  its 
largest  buildings  and  faced  the  new  demand 
with  a  reduction  of  fifty  per  cent  in  its 
previous  equipment. 


Ill 


It  was  fortunate,  to  the  end  of  undoing 
the  Hun,  that  the  wire  rope  industry  from 
the  very  beginning  of  the  war  had  learned 
to  pick  up  loads  on  short  notice  and  pack 
them  without  losing  headway. 

Prior  to  1917  it  had  manufactured  in  large 

24 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

volume  for  the  Allies,  and  upon  America's 
entrance  into  the  war,  the  American  Iron 
and  Steel  Institute,  at  the  request  of  the 
Government,  formed  a  committee  for  the 
handling  and  distribution  of  wire  rope. 
This  committee  consisted  of  Karl  G.  Roeb- 
ling,  of  John  A.  Roebling's  Sons  Company, 
Trenton,  Chairman;  Frank  Baackes,  General 
Sales  Agent  of  the  American  Steel  and  Wire 
Company,  Trenton;  and  John  L.  Broderick, 
of  the  firm  of  Broderick  &  Bascom,  of  St. 
Louis. 

The  rope  makers  were  called  together,  the 
known  requirements  of  the  Government 
explained  to  them,  and  data  taken  on 
prospective  supply  of  materials.  Beginning 
May  15,  1917,  all  Government  requirements 
were  sent  to  the  sub-committee  to  be  allotted 
to  the  various  plants  on  a  basis  of  production. 

NO  TIME  TO  CONSIDER 
THE  CLOCK 

From  that  time  on,  neither  the  members 
of  the  committee  nor  anyone  else  connected 
with  the  wire  rope  business,  had  time  to 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

consider  the  clock.  But  when  the  hour  of 
the  armistice  struck  every  demand  had  been 
met  on  time,  and  the  productive  capacity  of 
the  wire  manufactories  had  been  increased 
nearly  one  hundred  per  cent.  When  the  big 
demand  of  the  Navy  for  the  Mine  Barrage 
came,  the  organization  had  been  schooled  in 
doing  the  impossible.. 

To  facilitate  the  distribution  of  wire  and 
thus  hasten  production,  a  sub-committee 
had  been  formed  by  the  Institute,  with 
Frank  Baackes  of  the  American  Steel  and 
Wire  Company  as  its  chairman.  The  close 
co-operation  of  these  committees  in  the 
allotment  of  requirements  and  the  prompt 
provision  of  wire  of  which  the  smaller 
manufacturers  were  not  producers,  was  a 
decisive  factor  in  meeting  the  demand. 
The  rest  was  work  —  ceaseless,  driving 
and  conscientious. 

WIRE  ROPE  IS  MADE 
WITH  A  CONSCIENCE 

Even  in  the  everyday  business  of  the 
world,  the  uses  to  which  wire  rope  are  put 

26 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 


2  TIG  3  PIC  A  FIG  5  FIG  6 


A  mine  finding  its  position  at  the  desired  depth 
below  the  surface  of  the  sea 


are  pre-eminently  those  in  which  the  lives 
and  safety  of  people  are  constantly  at 
hazard.  It  is  a  commodity  which  cannot  be 
skimped  and  in  which  superficial  appearance 
is  of  no  value.  Its  making  involves  a  stern 
moral  responsibility,  and  even  in  the  conduct 
of  peace-time  manufacture  carelessness  or 
parsimony  would  spell  commercial  disaster 
and  public  reprobation.  Wire  rope  simply 
has  to  be  made  on  honor. 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

The  demands  of  the  war  intensified  this 
responsibility,  since  on  the  perfection  of  the 
product  hung  the  lives  of  our  own  soldiers 
and  sailors,  and,  in  the  last  analysis,  the 
outcome  of  the  war. 


TWENTY-SIX  OPERATIONS 
IN  MANUFACTURE 

Wire  rope,  when  it  is  delivered  to  the 
consumer,  has  passed  through  twenty-six 
distinct  operations  in  the  making,  and  at 
every  step  of  its  progress  the  maker  has  the 
alternative  of  taking  a  chance  on  the  cheap 
and  easy  way,  the  alternative  of  dodging 
the  standard  or  living  up  to  it.  The  record 
of  the  service  throughout  the  war  bears 
ample  testimony  to  the  way  in  which  the 
work  of  the  American  factories  was  done, 
from  the  first  process  to  the  last. 

There  is  romance  in  the  making  of  steel, 
in  steel  itself,  which  fairly  outdoes  half  the 
fiction;  but  when  from  the  iron  ore  the 
various  steps  have  all  been  taken  which 
lead  to  the  production  of  the  steel  ingot, 
the  story  of  wire  rope  is  barely  begun. 

28 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

From  beginning  to  end,  even  from  the  ore 
stage,  it  is  a  story  of  complex  chemistry  and 
rigid  rejection  of  all  save  the  very  cream  of 
the  material.  It  is  treatment  after  treat- 
ment to  eliminate  content  and  conditions  by 
which  any  element  of  weakness  may  creep 
into  the  finished  product,  and  there  are 
opportunities  all  along  the  way. 

ASKING  THE  UTMOST 
OF  STEEL 

But  there  is  steel,  and  steel.  The  layman 
doesn't  know  this.  To  him  steel  is  a  ponder- 
ous generality.  The  steel  girder  that  goes 
to  make  the  frame  of  a  skyscraper,  the  rail 
that  carries  a  world's  commerce — steel  in 
its  million  everyday  uses  is  only  a  cousin  to 
the  aristocratic  stuff  that  must  be  singled 
out  for  the  making  of  wire  rope,  with  its 
everlasting  tests  for  tensile  strength,  elonga- 
tion, torsion  and  bending,  and  every  other 
tax  that  can  be  laid  upon  it,  including,  at 
the  last,  the  surety  of  safety  to  human  life. 

Just  plain  everyday  steel  won't  do.  And 
so  scrupulous  are  the  makers  in  the  rejection 

29 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

of  unsuitable  material  that  when  the  ingot 
has  been  reduced  to  wire  ready  for  the  rope- 
shop,  forty-two  per  cent  of  it  has  gone  to  the 
scrap  heap. 


IV 


It  taxes  the  credulity  of  the  layman  to 
believe  that  wire  is  made  by  pulling  the  cold 
steel  of  a  rod,  rolled  down  from  a  billet, 
through  a  hole  in  a  die  of  still  harder  steel. 
It  sounds,  again,  like  invention,  that  by 
repetition  of  this  process  the  metal  of  a  rod 
is  spun  down  to  a  diameter  of  .018  of  an 
inch,  and  at  every  redrawing  the  steel  is 
bathed  and  baked  and  cooled  and  tested 
and  new  rejections  made. 

A  REDUCTION  OF 
512,377  FOLD 

When,  at  last,  the  wire  making  is  finished 
the  ingot  has  been  reduced  512,377  fold,  or 

3° 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

in  the  proportion  of  over  half  a  million  to 
one.  And  the  first  thing  that  happens  when 
the  wire  gets  to  the  rope  mill  is  a  grilling 
test  before  it  is  sent  to  the  stock  bins. 

Then,  with  what  is  left,  the  labor  of  rope 
making  begins,  the  drawn  steel  on  its 
numberless  spools  whisking  through  the 
stranding  machines  and  squeezers,  that 
twist  it  around  its  core,  like  so  much  cotton 
yarn.  The  rope  machines  repeat  the  process 
with  the  strands.  In  the  special  cables  used 
to  tether  observation  balloons,  and  which 
have  the  thickness  of  a  lead  pencil  but  a 
strength  measured  in  tons,  one  finds  at  the 
center  of  the  rope  a  core  of  copper  wire 
which  serves  for  telephonic  communication 
between  the  observer  and  the  ground. 

The  entire  process  from  steel  rod  to 
finished  wire,  is  long  and  expensive,  often 
requiring  from  six  to  eight  weeks  of  unceasing 
labor  before  the  steel  has  been  brought  to  its 
finished  shape  and  size.  With  multiplied 
demand  on  every  hand  for  special  rope  with 
new  and  unusual  specifications,  the  wire  com- 
mittee of  the  rope  makers  woke  every  morning 

31 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

with  a  new  stunt  before  it  and  a  time  limit  on 
its  performance  that  taxed  every  resource. 

THE  FIGHT  FOR 
MATERIALS 

The  material  problem  was  a  steady  fight, 
since  good  wire  rope  can  only  be  made  from 
the  best  of  open-hearth  steel  requiring  a 
special  grade  of  pig  iron  with  a  low  content 
of  phosphorus  and  sulphur.  But  the  same 
quality  of  iron  was  required  for  shell  steel, 
and  the  makers  of  munitions  were  using  it 
up  at  a  rate  never  before  heard  of.  So  the 
committees  and  the  organizations  behind 
them  worked  at  high  tension,  but  in  the 
matter  of  raw  material  they  were  living 
from  hand  to  mouth  for  months,  in  the 
effort  to  keep  abreast  of  deliveries. 

SPECIAL 
REQUIREMENTS 

The  immense  demand  for  the  Mine  Bar- 
rage was  an  extra  task,  and  the  making  of 
the  rope,  with  a  palpable  decline  in  available 
labor,  was  not  the  whole  of  the  rope  manu- 
facturers' contribution.  The  finishing  in- 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

volved  work  of  a  special  character.  The 
galvanizing  was  necessarily  superior  to  any 
used  in  ordinary  production  since  the  rope 
was  to  lie  under  water  for  an  indefinite 
length  of  time  and  had  to  be  proof  against 
corrosion.  If  it  had  rusted  off  there  would 
have  been  a  flock  of  TNT  packages  floating 
around  the  North  Sea,  and  wherever  else 
its  waters  flowed,  a  tide-borne  menace  to 
Allied  shipping  far  more  than  to  the  enemy. 
In  every  plant  where  rope  was  being  pro- 
duced a  naval  officer  was  stationed  to  confer 
on  the  work  as  it  progressed  and  to  check 
up  the  output  with  specifications  both  as  to 
quality  and  delivery. 

In  a  way,  all  hands  were  moving  in  the 
dark.  The  mine  itself  was  in  many  respects 
a  new  device,  and  was  being  turned  out  in 
vast  numbers  practically  without  experi- 
mentation. The  Government  had  simply  to 
gamble  on  the  accuracy  of  its  scientific 
deductions  and  fix  a  productive  schedule  of 
so  many  mines  a  day. 

There  was  a  time,  owing  to  the  difficulties 
of  transportation,  when  one  of  the  only  two 

33 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

concerns  able  to  manufacture  aircraft  cable 
was  supplying  eighty  per  cent  of  it,  and  a 
great  share  of  other  product  besides.  At 
one  interval  the  crippling  of  either  the 
Roebling  or  American  Steel  and  Wire  plants 
would  have  proved  embarrassing,  to  say  the 
least,  to  three  of  the  largest  and  most  vital 
Government  war  projects. 


V 


With  the  requirement  for  rope,  there 
were  concomitant  demands  for  special  pre- 
paration of  the  product  for  shipment,  which 
included  its  reduction  to  the  lengths  re- 
quired for  its  various  uses. 

The  plummet  cords,  for  example,  had  to 
be  cut  by  the  makers  to  short  lengths, 
dipped  in  fish  oil,  and  attached  to  the  steel 
plummet  spools  in  such  a  way  that  the 
sudden  stop  at  the  required  depth  would 

34 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 

not  tear  them  from  the  spool.  This  does 
not  sound  like  so  small  an  item  when  it  is 
considered  that  there  was  a  total  of  125,000 
spools  and  that  deliveries  were  at  the  rate 
of  as  high  as  4,000  a  day.  All  this  work  was 
done  at  the  factories  of  the  Roebling 
Company  and  the  American  Steel  &  Wire 
Company. 

In  addition  to  this,  the  Roebling  force 
attached  about  500,000  sockets  and  hooks, 
at  the  rate  of  6,000  a  day,  and  supplied  all 
the  four-legged  lifting  slings. 

In  all  this  work  there  was  a  constant 
change  of  program,  necessitated  by  the 
requirements  and  conditions  of  the  mine- 
laying  forces.  Endeavoring  to  accomplish 
what  had  been  thought  impossible,  the  rope 
makers,  and  for  that  matter  the  personnel 
of  the  Navy  also  who  were  engaged  on  the 
rope  problems,  had  to  fall  back  on  native 
ingenuity  in  many  junctures  in  order  to 
overcome  obstacles  of  all  sorts  which  con- 
stantly arose. 


35 


WIRE-ROPING  THE 

A  FEVERISH  TASK 
DONE  RIGHT 

All  told,  the  making  of  wire  rope  for  war 
purposes  was  a  feverish  task,  done  in 
feverish  haste,  but  done,  nevertheless,  on  all 
sides  with  marked  efficiency  and  prompti- 
tude worthy  of  commemoration. 


VI 


It  will  be  noted  from  the  following  figures 
of  production  that  this  large  volume  of 
excess  and  highly  specialized  production 
was  widely  distributed  throughout  the 
United  States;  but  the  producers,  and  the 
committees  who  guided  their  production, 
have  cause  for  self-congratulation  in  the  fact 
that  their  output  was  assembled  at  the  right 
place  and  at  the  required  time  fof  its  great 
purpose,  and  that  it  did  the  work  it  was 
meant  to  do,  in  a  manner  that  vindicated 
the  effort  of  its  makers: 

36 


GERMAN  SUBMARINE 


NORTH  SEA  MINE  BARRAGE 

FEET  OF 
WIRE  ROPE 

John  A.  Roebling's  Sons  Co.,  Trenton,  N.  J 27,363,200 

American  Steel  &  Wire  Co.,  Worcester,  Mass 22,948,270 

A.  Leschen  &  Sons  Rope  Co.,  St.  Louis,  Mo 10,503,000 

Broderick  &  Bascom  Rope  Co.,  St.  Louis,  Mo 4,241,380 

Hazard  Mfg.  Co.,  Wilkes-Barre,  Pa 3,975,950 

Macomber  &  Whyte  Rope  Co.,  Kenosha,  Wis 3,919,900 

Williamsport  Wire  Rope  Co.,  Williamsport,  Pa 2,982,600 

Waterbury  Co.,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y 2,818,200 

Wright  Wire  Co.,  Worcester,  Mass.  .  .    1,391,520 


.  80,244,020 


For  the  Adriatic  sea  barrage,  rendered  un- 
necessary by  virtue  of  the  German  capitula- 
tion, the  figures  of  production  were  as  follows : 

PROPOSED 

ADRIATIC  SEA  MINE  BARRAGE 

FEET  OF 
WIRE  ROPE 

American  Steel  &  Wire  Co.,  Worcester,  Mass 4,995,000 

John  A.  Roebling's  Sons  Co.,  Trenton,  N.  J. , 4,473,000 

A.  Leschen  &  Sons  Rope  Co.,  St.  Louis,  Mo 1,875,000 

Hazard  Mfg.  Co.,  Wilkes-Barre,  Pa 1,110,000 

Macomber  &  Whyte  Rope  Co.,  Kenosha,  Wis 885,000 

Williamsport  Wire  Rope  Co.,  Williamsport,  Pa 810,000 

Waterbury  Co.,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y 420,000 

Wright  Wire  Co.,  Worcester,  Mass 330,000 

Upson  &  Walton 255,000 

15,153,000 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


AP3  28  1939 


REC'D  LD 


LD  21-5m-l,'39(7053s7) 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


